It’s been nearly four years since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden spilled some of the most deeply held secrets of the National Security Agency, emerging from obscurity to become a central figure in a global debate about surveillance and secrecy.
Now, nearly every week, Snowden hops on his computer from his exile in Russia for a video chat with university students, techies or privacy advocates in some corner of North America.
Never in modern times has an accused enemy of the U.S. state had so much access to the public, or so divided people about where he lands on the spectrum from “traitor” to “hero.”
It’s not a bad gig. Snowden’s got cash and clout, pulling in $30,000 or more per talk, although his lawyer says he does many appearances for little or no money.
The U.S. intelligence community despises Snowden. But Silicon Valley listens to him. And citizens fearful of government-surveillance overreach see him as a voice of truth. If Snowden is a traitor, he is not a traitor to the whole United States, rather to a divided nation groping for a balance between personal privacy and national security.
Snowden’s visage shows up not only on huge screens at university campuses but also close to the apex of power. On May 15, Snowden will offer a “fireside chat” to open the K(NO)W Identity conference in Washington’s Ronald Reagan Building, barely three blocks from the White House. A day later, the chief technology officer of the Air Force will address the same confab.
It’s at universities where Snowden seems to be in greatest demand. The list of those that have paid to hear him speak is long, and includes not just illustrious private institutions like Princeton, the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins University but also publicly funded ones such as Ohio State University, University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Arizona and the College of William & Mary in Virginia.
This is a university, and universities take very seriously the question of academic freedom.
Ethan Zuckerman, Center for Civic Media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“No one tried to shut us down,” said Ethan Zuckerman, a media scholar and director of the Center for Civic Media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Snowden took part in a conference last July 22. “This is a university, and universities take very seriously the question of academic freedom.”
When the University of Pittsburgh’s program council went looking for a speaker, lecture director Zach Linn said they sought “somebody a little bit different, somebody relevant to the times.” They settled on Snowden to speak Feb. 1. Tickets sold out within three days, he said.
Snowden remains a lightning rod figure, though, and the university took precautions.
“We did screen questions ahead of time because whenever you have a controversial speaker and you have a hot mic in a crowd . . . there was a concern that someone would go off,” Linn said.
Moderators for events say they are aware Snowden remains politically radioactive.
Lawrence Wilkerson, the chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell who now teaches public policy at William & Mary, a public Virginia university, said that if Snowden “were to ask me, ‘Should I come home?’ I’d say, ‘Absolutely not. You’ll be hung.’ ”
Wilkerson will moderate a Snowden video chat at the university on Tuesday night.
President Donald Trump and CIA Director Mike Pompeo have said they think Snowden should be executed. He remains a deeply contentious figure.
Pompeo, in his first public remarks since taking over the agency in January, decried those who view Snowden as anything less than a traitor.
True whistleblowers use the well-established and discreet processes in place to voice grievances.
Mike Pompeo, CIA director
“True whistleblowers use the well-established and discreet processes in place to voice grievances. They do not put American lives at risk,” Pompeo said last Thursday, adding that Snowden’s disclosures had led more than 1,000 foreign targets of surveillance to try to change the ways they communicated to avoid detection.
A former CIA and NSA director, retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, concurred that Snowden’s disclosures were “the single greatest hemorrhage of legitimate American secrets in our history,” but he said that the disclosures did not reveal any illegal activity by the NSA.
“Despite all the sound and fury, there really hasn’t been a lot of changes based on the Snowden allegations,” said Hayden, who led the NSA from 1999 to 2005 and the CIA from 2006 to 2009.
Nor was Hayden disturbed by Snowden’s cashing in on his fame with fees for his talks.
“I do things for a speaker’s fee. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that,” he said.
Like Trump, Snowden has a sizable audience on Twitter, where he has more than 3 million followers. The exiled former contractor was also the subject of a 2016 Oliver Stone biopic, titled “Snowden,” which pulled in $37 million at the box office.